death and madness in the phaedo and phaedrus · in the phaedo, plato claims that philosophy is a...

Immortal mortals, mortal immortals, living their death and dying their life.—Heraclitus

Why should we not call madness death, seeing that by it mind dies, thenoblest part of us?

—Philo

READERS OF PLATO’S dialogues would recognize a constantly renewed desireto define philosophy and to distinguish it from sophistry, rhetoric, poetry,etc.1 One suspects that this attempt to delimit philosophy as a discourse isitself what philosophizing is. In Plato, reflexivity is already inscribed into thenature of philosophical activity. The Phaedo and the Phaedrus are two ofPlato’s dialogues where philosophical activity is presented as a questioning ofwhat philosophy is. In the Phaedo, Plato claims that philosophy is a practicefor dying and death, whereas in the Phaedrus philosophy is described as a kindof madness. Through these two characterizations of philosophy, Plato deter-mines the subsequent attempts to think philosophy, as well as to think philo-sophically about the themes of madness and death. After Plato, madness anddeath become deeply connected to the way in which philosophy interpretsitself. Therefore, to the extent that philosophy is considered to be, amongother things, the activity of asking what philosophy is, madness and deathemerge as two themes that can help us understand this activity. To say thatphilosophy is an activity of asking what philosophy itself is does not suggest

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Plato

Death and Madness in thePhaedo and Phaedrus

© 2005 State University of New York Press, Albany

that all philosophical activity explicitly asks this question. Historically, thequestion of what philosophy is has not always been explicitly posed. How-ever, every philosophical questioning does in fact bring together an implicitunderstanding of what philosophy is. Martin Heidegger expresses this con-viction in What is Philosophy?2 and “What is Metaphysics?”3 These two worksnot only connect the question of what philosophy is to philosophical activ-ity itself, but also articulate this activity in terms of a certain engagement.4

Philosophy, according to Heidegger, is a question of a fundamental attune-ment (Stimmung) where philosophy “concerns us, touches us in our verynature.”5 In “What is Metaphysics?” Heidegger expresses the same convic-tion in terms of metaphysical questions: “. . . every metaphysical questioncan be asked only in such a way that the questioner as such is also therewithin the question, that is, is placed in question.”6 Plato shares the convic-tion that philosophy is a matter of engagement. In the Phaedo this engage-ment is characterized in terms of death.7 Socrates states that Evenus, who isotherwise indistinguishable from a philosopher, ought to follow him to deathif he (Evenus) is a real philosopher. Yet Evenus’s alleged unwillingness to dothis “surprises” Socrates and leads him to question whether Evenus is actu-ally a philosopher. Evenus is only believed to be a philosopher. Is there a cri-terion to distinguish a philosopher from a sophist? It seems that philosophyand sophistry speak about the same thing to a large extent. What distin-guishes philosophical activity is an engagement with not only what is said,but also with that which speaks to us. The response to being (ousia) is aresponse to what a moment presents.

Yet what is philosophical activity as opposed to sophistry? Where doesphilosophy begin? What, if any, is the mark of the moment where philoso-phy is not a matter of content, but a desire for engagement?8 At this pointone must not simply ask the historical question as to when philosophystarted, or who the first philosopher was. Even when we raise this historicalquestion we realize that our answer depends upon the way in which weunderstand what philosophy is. Hence, the question of the beginning of phi-losophy is itself a philosophical question, not only because beginning is aphilosophical problem, but also because we need to raise the question ofwhat philosophy is, that is, the philosophical question of ti to estin? (whatis . . . ?). We often take it for granted that the philosophical (rather than thehistorical) beginning of philosophy is wonder (thaumazein).9 Yet we mustemphasize that wonder is not the origin of philosophy in the sense of abeginning, which is left behind. In What is Philosophy?, Heidegger claimsthat arche is both the beginning and the principle of (that which rules) phi-losophy.10 Hence, thaumazein is not simply the mood one is in before startingto philosophize, but it is an attunement between the questioner and theworld. In this sense of the word “beginning,” there are in fact multiple begin-nings of philosophy, and perhaps wonder is one of them. In Plato we find two

MADNESS AND DEATH IN PHILOSOPHY14


different origins (archai) or definitions of philosophy: philosophy as a prac-tice of death, and philosophy as a kind of madness.

In what follows I will discuss the Phaedo and the Phaedrus. My guidingtopic in these discussions will be the following: For Plato philosophy, definedas a kind of madness and as a preparation for death, is, in the first instance, arelationship to absence. To the extent that one is called to understand theworld around oneself, one is called to respond philosophically to the being ofthings, and thereby one is transported to a realm of absence. Death charac-terizes this experience of transport, which is not simply an experience intime, but an archaic experience, perhaps an experience of that which,according to Plato, has never been present. Hence, the willingness to die, orto assume a different relationship to death, is what distinguishes the philoso-pher from the sophist. However, this understanding of absence is displaced inand through Plato’s text once he adopts the language of forms (ideas). Thetheory of ideas (or even the lack of such a theory) is Plato’s response to thephilosophical question of absence.11 Plato articulates this absence as thatwhich accounts for (grounds and causes) things that are present. Thingsthemselves are constituted in terms of archai that are not present, in factthose that are always absent. Philosophy, therefore, is an attempt to speak ofthat which is absent, that which is the ground of what is present. For Plato,death and madness give “access” to this absence. Yet this possibility of accessalso transforms absence into presence. This transformation enables us tounderstand Heidegger’s claim that the Greeks think being always as presence.This is not to say that the Greeks did not think of absence, but that Greekshad a particular understanding of absence derived from presence. Therefore,Plato institutes a conceptual continuity between presence and absence, thatis, absence is understood as a modification of presence within a conceptuallyhomogenous field.12

PHAEDO

In terms of the dramatic structure of the dialogue, the question of philosophyas a preparation for death emerges in the context of Socrates’ impendingdeath. We tend to think that the dialogue introduces the question of deathbecause it concerns Socrates’ death. Yet this question is introduced in a seem-ingly accidental manner. Socrates says that Evenus has to follow him to deathif he (Evenus) is a real philosopher. The puzzle this advice causes leadsSocrates to explain why “those who are touched13 by philosophy in the propermanner (orthos)14 practice dying and death.” There is, therefore, an improperway of practicing philosophy, as well as an improper way of understandingdeath.15 Philosophy is a practice for death only when philosophy and deathare understood in the proper manner. Socrates articulates this distinction inresponse to Simmias’s statement that there are people who think that

PLATO: DEATH AND MADNESS 15


philosophers desire death and well deserve it too. Socrates answers that thesepeople speak the truth, but “they do not know in what way they [philoso-phers] deserve death, nor what kind of death it is” (64b).

What, then is the improper manner of practicing philosophy? Is animproper practice of philosophy still philosophy, or does it become someother activity? Socrates formulates his answer on the basis of philosophicalengagement rather than on content. What distinguishes proper philosophyfrom improper and perhaps even non-philosophy is not the presence of a cer-tain content in the philosophical discourse. It is not as if philosophers thinkabout certain issues, as opposed to nonphilosophers who do not know any-thing about these issues. What makes a certain activity philosophy, accord-ing to Plato, is the way in which someone is engaged with this activity. Phi-losophy is not the knowledge of certain principles, or content, but aparticular engagement with logos. Yet one does not simply enter into a philo-sophical engagement at will.16 Even though the philosophical engagementmanifests itself as a willingness to die, one does not engage with philosophymerely by willing to die, for example, by committing suicide. Socrates artic-ulates the distinction between suicide and the philosophical conception ofdeath in terms of his response to Cebes’ question concerning the incompati-bility of Socrates’ claims that Evenus should follow him to death, and thatsuicide is not permitted. Socrates answers that one should not escape life tothe extent that one is the property of the gods, but one can, through the prac-tice of philosophy, join “other wise and good gods.” A mere willingness to die,to end one’s life, does not guarantee proper philosophical activity. Thus,philosophical engagement requires a displacement of the ordinary under-standing of death. Since philosophy articulates itself in terms of a differentunderstanding of death, it has to delimit itself with regard to other activitiesby raising the question of what it itself is. The accompaniment of this ques-tioning and reflective attitude concerning philosophy itself is what makes aquestion a philosophical question. This seems to be a characteristic that Hei-degger attributes to metaphysics: “. . . every metaphysical question alwaysencompasses the whole range of metaphysical problems. Each question isitself always the whole.”17

Plato understands this engagement with/of “the whole” in terms ofdeath.18 Yet what does it mean to say philosophy is a preparation for death?Socrates establishes what death is quite unproblematically, without any resis-tance from his interlocutors.19 “Do we think there is such a thing as death?”The answer is an unequivocal “yes.” There is such a thing. Socrates contin-ues: “we believe, do we not, that death is the separation of the soul from thebody, and that the state of being dead is the state in which the body is sepa-rated from the soul and exists alone by itself and the soul is separated fromthe body and exists alone by itself?” (64c). The word for separation, apallagen,can also mean “deliverance,” “release,” or “departure.” According to this def-



inition of death, not only the soul, but also the body has a separate existence,that is, it can also exist by itself. Yet what kind of existence can one attributeto the body by itself? Is the body not dead once separated from the soul? Isn’tthe body precisely that which cannot exist by itself?20 This understanding ofdeath as a separation is the most important aspect of the dialogue, since thesubsequent discussion in its entirety follows from this understanding ofdeath.21 Moreover, this definition of death is particularly important for subse-quent interpretations of Plato’s philosophy. Obviously, there is a metaphysi-cal difficulty in this definition, since it implies the separability, and conse-quently the potentially independent existence, of the body and the soul.22

Philosophically, it is difficult to accept this conclusion. However, one has todistinguish the question of the independent existence of the body and thesoul from the question of their separation in death. Even if one says that thesoul and the body cannot exist separately, one still has to explain why Platodefines death as their separation, and why he introduces this understandingof death in a few lines without any apparent complication.

Socrates’ explanation of why philosophy is a preparation for death anddying starts out with a description of the philosopher. The philosopher,according to Socrates, is not concerned with the pleasures of the body. Peo-ple would think that someone who is not concerned with the pleasures of thebody “does not deserve to live, and that one who cares nothing for the plea-sures of the body is about as good as dead” (65a). Initially it appears thatSocrates associates life with the bodily functions. Yet this is what most peo-ple think, and not necessarily a proper understanding of life. This poses a spe-cial difficulty in understanding the role of the soul for life. The soul is said tobe the cause (aitia) of life. It is also that which is related to death in that itsseparation from the body leads to death. Socrates leaves the description ofthe philosopher with respect to the bodily pleasures and moves on to theacquisition of knowledge. The body is also said to be a hindrance in gainingknowledge, as the body’s sources (the senses) do not yield accurate knowl-edge. In other words, both in everyday life, as well as in the pursuit of knowl-edge, the philosopher tries to dissociate him/herself from the body. YetSocrates’ discussion up to this point does not provide a proper explanation ofhow philosophy is a practice for the separation of the soul and the body. Onecannot understand this separation by simply observing or describing thephilosopher. As we see in the next argument, true understanding is not to beaccomplished in terms of things we observe, but in terms of principles thatare not immediately present. At this point the content of Socrates’ argumentconverges with the way in which he designs his argument, that is, Plato artic-ulates the necessity of looking away from the sensuous by himself lookingaway from what is given to the senses.

Socrates changes his line of questioning by asking whether we think thatthere is such a thing as the just itself. By admitting that there are such things



as beauty itself, goodness itself, justice itself, Socrates’ interlocutor is forcedto look away from the realm of the sensuous to that which is not sensuouslypresent.23 Socrates claims that these forms are the underlying being of every-thing. To know what lies before us, one must look away from that thing. Itrequires a certain kind of access to something that is absent, yet which con-stitutes the underlying being of that which is in front of us. This look away isnot a voluntary action that results from a decision, but a condition for thepossibility of perceptual knowledge. As Plato demonstrates in his argumentthat knowledge is recollection, a prior knowledge of forms, such as the knowl-edge of equality, is necessary in order to be able to perceive any two thingsresembling each other (i.e., falling short of equality) (73c–75c). The knowl-edge of these forms cannot be reached through the senses. The senses onlygive access to things that are physically present. Yet their ground, cause, orunderlying being (ousia) is not present (65e). These grounds can only beaccessed through thinking detached from the senses, that is, through the soul“separated” from the body. Hence the body is said to be the cause of the evilthat distracts the soul from its pursuit of truth. The foolishness of the bodykeeps one away from this pursuit. Since pure knowledge is impossible to theextent that the body intervenes in this pursuit, it can only be gained at themoment of a complete separation of the soul from the body. Yet this does notmean that there is nothing to do while the body is still with the soul, namely,while one is alive. The philosopher engages in a kind of purification in orderto collect and bring the soul together from all parts of the body as much aspossible, that is, he or she tries to separate the soul from the body. Hence, itwould be absurd for the philosopher to be afraid of death once this separationis finalized. Once death is understood properly, then the fear of death is cir-cumvented, and once this fear is circumvented, there is nothing more to beafraid of in life.

Socrates’ response to Cebes’ concern that people still fear that the souldoes not exist after death makes explicit what has been implicitly the under-lying theme of the dialogue, namely, the relationship between the opposites.Plato had already intimated the structure of oppositions at the beginning ofthe dialogue. Opposites are related to each other in such a way that one can-not experience or even comprehend one of the opposites without the other;for example, there is no pleasure without pain, as Socrates suggests when heis freed from his shackles. In response to Cebes, Socrates argues that oppositescome from each other; death comes from life just as life comes from death.The move from death to life is necessary for existence in general to continue,and is possible only through the soul being immortal. Our souls exist inanother world when we are dead. Hence “the living are generated from thedead, just as much as the dead is from the living . . . it seems . . . to be a suf-ficient proof that the souls of the dead exist somewhere, whence they comeback to life” (72a).



According to the dialogue, this structure of opposites not only establishesthat the souls of the dead in fact survive death, but also shows that knowl-edge is recollection.24 Socrates establishes that knowledge is recollectionthrough demonstrating that the concept of equality cannot be derived fromthe things that we observe, since no two things exhibit perfect equality. Thisproof seems to be similar to the one in the Meno, in that both demonstratethe impossibility of arriving at the “itself” through things that we canobserve. However, the argument in the Phaedo demonstrates the additionalpoint that this knowledge of equality as such is necessary in order to perceivetwo things as similar.25 The requirement of the form of equality connects theconviction that things in the world are what they are through the forms withthe claim that we cannot even perceive and understand things in the worldwithout an access to forms.26 Since the knowledge of forms must have beenwith us prior to any perception, it can only be explained as being in our soulprior to having any experience, that is, prior to birth.

Yet, according to Simmias, the childish fear of death in us is not satisfiedby this argument. The proof only shows that the soul existed before we wereborn, but not after we die. As a response to this difficulty, Socrates connectsthe being of the soul with the being of things.27 The soul knows the being ofthings because it is akin to such being, unchanging, divine, deathless, intel-ligible, and invisible. Therefore, we should understand the soul in terms ofthe characteristics of the forms. Yet how is the knowledge of the soul possi-ble? If the soul is itself invisible and absent in any given presence, what is itthat knows the soul? The answer seems to suggest that the soul has a circularrelationship to itself.28 It has to know itself. Within the Platonic framework,the knowledge of the soul is only possible with regard to its form.29 That is tosay, we can only know one, unchanging, immortal soul. Therefore, the rela-tionship between the being of the soul and individual souls seem to have asimilar character to the relationship between equality itself, and equal things.Socrates explains this relationship in terms of his response to Cebes’ objec-tion that the soul may live longer than the body, but that this does not provethat it is immortal. Socrates’ response first establishes that forms, that areinvisible, are the causes of things that are visible. The individual things arewhat they are in virtue of their participation in the universals. Accordinglythe soul, considered as a universal, is that which gives life, as well as thatwhich does not accept its opposite, namely death. This response is intendedto explain the relationship of the soul to the body, but not the relationshipbetween the being (form) of the soul and the individual souls. The questionremains as to how one can distinguish individual souls from each other. Tothe extent that the soul is united with the body it can be said to be individ-uated, but what is it that individuates the soul after its separation from thebody?30 The soul is that which gives life to the body, but without the body itis impossible to understand the identity of the individual soul. The soul is not



only inaccessible to the senses, but it is not a “thing” that can exist indepen-dently of the body and still be individuated.

The soul in a body is that which gives access to what is absent. It hasaccess to things that are not immediately present. Yet the presence of thethings that are present is constituted (caused) by things that are themselvesnot present, namely, forms. On the other hand, since the soul is nothing, butrather is that which provides access to (perceives and understands) the pres-ence of things that are present, it can be read as the unity of presence, just asforms constitute the unity of particulars. In the dialogue Socrates refers to thisunity in terms of the individual soul “collecting and bringing itself together”(67c). Yet this unity is already presupposed since it cannot be first constitutedfrom the things that are present. Since this unity is also the presupposition forany perception, Plato attributes this unity to a time before birth. The soul issaid to exist before we were born. The soul, therefore, has to be understood asthat which is absent, yet constitutes the presence of the things that are pre-sent. To the extent that it can be known it is one, and the multiplicity of indi-vidual souls can only be understood in terms of the multiplicity of bodies.

To say that the soul is immortal is to say that there is a unity of presence,and individuals participate in this unity. The soul is the cause of life. Yet whatdoes it mean to say that the individual is dead? If the soul is that which causeslife and if the body is alive to the extent that it is united with the soul, humanlife is a unity of life and death. Therefore, death is not the simple opposite oflife as people generally think, taking it to be the end of ordinary life, but italready is in and through life. But which part of human existence representslife and which part represents death? Plato’s response to this question is com-plicated.31 First of all, we have to reiterate that death is that which providesaccess to beings in themselves, as well as that which makes human percep-tion in life possible. The soul is the part, which represents both of theseaspects. Furthermore, the soul is that which knows death the least, because itis said to be immortal. Hence, by displacing the ordinary understanding ofdeath, Plato associates the soul with life and the body with death.32 People,who think that philosophers are as good as dead because philosophers denybodily pleasures are wrong in thinking that life is to be associated with thebody. Plato’s strategy does not simply reverse the terms of the body and thesoul with respect to life and death, but complicates the opposition betweenlife and death while carrying over the opposition to one between body andsoul. As a result, that which represents absence (the soul) emerges as thatwhich is the prime presence. This is to say that even though Plato initiallyarticulates the nature of the soul in terms of absence (i.e., in terms of “things”that are not present), he displaces this explanation by attributing a full pres-ence of these things to the soul after death. The soul (that which practicesphilosophy properly) is going to be fully present to forms, just as they aregoing to be fully present to the soul.



Death for Plato provides an access to forms that are not present. How-ever, death (i.e., a certain type of absence within presence) is already presup-posed in order to be able to perceive anything. Plato demonstrates this pre-supposition in his argument that learning is recollection. It is thisconfrontation with death that Plato sees as an engagement of philosophy. “Ido not believe anyone who heard us now . . . would say that I am chatteringand talking about things which do not concern me” (70c, my emphasis). The“now” Socrates is referring to is the moment of confrontation with death,where philosophy is not an activity that is to be justified in terms of its con-tent, but in terms of being touched. It is precisely the same touch that Platoarticulates in the Phaedrus as madness.

PHAEDRUS

In the Phaedrus, madness plays a similar role to that played by death in thePhaedo. A special kind of madness, just like the particular understanding ofdeath we have just considered, is said to provide access to the forms that arenot present in front of us. This transition from death to madness is especiallyimportant between the Phaedo and the Phaedrus, because Plato refers to thecontamination of the soul by the body as a kind of foolishness. Yet this con-ception of madness (referred to as “of human origin” in the Phaedrus) has tobe distinguished from divine madness, just as the ordinary death of the bodyhas to be distinguished from death as the separation of the soul from the body.Madness is a peculiar configuration of death in life, and plays the same roleas death in delimiting philosophy as a peculiar engagement.

Socrates’ speech developing philosophy as a kind of madness follows twospeeches, Lysias’s speech read by Phaedrus, and Socrates’ own speechattempting to surpass the former. The dialogue starts out with Socrates meet-ing Phaedrus who is on his way to take a walk outside the city walls. Socrateshas already been lured outside the city, to unfamiliar domains. Yet Socratesimmediately displaces the unfamiliarity of the country outside the city wallsby locating exactly where Boreas is said to have carried off Orethyia, just ashe is going to circumvent the unfamiliarity of madness through philosophy.Phaedrus has spent the entire night with Lysias who was in the city, andpromises to tell Socrates Lysias’s speech about love. Phaedrus says that this isparticularly fitting for Socrates, as he claims to be a lover. Lysias’s speechargues that favors should be granted to the one who is not in love rather thanto the lover.

Lysias’s speech is predicated upon the assumption that the lover is insane(nosein) rather than being in his or her right mind (sophronein). This assump-tion accompanies all the advantages Lysias claims the nonlover has over thelover. He argues that the “beloved,” who is assumed to be acting according tohis or her self-interest, should choose the nonlover over the lover, as the



nonlover will serve this self-interest better. Socrates finds Lysias’s speechrepetitious and not well organized. Yet there seems to be a more fundamen-tal problem with the speech, namely that even though it represents thevirtues of granting favors to the nonlover, Lysias actually becomes a lover,and demonstrates all the qualities of the “lover.” In other words, in order togain the favors of the “beloved,” the nonlover appeals to all the advantagesthat can equally originate from a lover. That is to say that since Lysias doesnot proceed from a definition of love, he is not in a position to distinguishthe lover from a nonlover. Thus Lysias does not have knowledge of himself,and is not in a position to preserve his identity as non-lover throughout thespeech.33 Socrates’ response and his subsequent speech underscore this prob-lem. Socrates delivers the speech as a lover disguised as a nonlover. More-over, Socrates indicates the difficulty of distinguishing the lover from a non-lover because they both have desires (epithumiai).

Socrates claims that it is possible to deliver a better speech than Lysias’s.In fact his breast is full, and the speech is forcing itself outside. Thereby,Socrates gives the first indication that he is not going to be responsible forthe speech. In addition, he covers his head, and qualifies his speech as alover disguised as a non-lover in order to win over the beloved. These qual-ifications move Socrates further away from being the origin of the discoursehe is about to deliver. Yet Socrates admits that he cannot surpass Lysias’sspeech in every aspect; this is something that would not even happen to theworst speaker. Phaedrus agrees and allows Socrates to retain the premise thatthe lover is more insane (nosein) than the non-lover. Therefore, bothspeeches share the same assumption: love is a kind of insanity. This assump-tion will not be entirely denied in Socrates’ second speech, although it willbe modified.

Socrates starts his speech with a definition of love. Yet this definition isalready qualified by the phrase “everybody knows.”34 Evidently love is goingto be different than what everybody thinks it is. Everybody thinks that loveis a kind of desire. But nonlovers also have desires for what is beautiful. Sothe definition is not proper to distinguish lovers from nonlovers. Socratesproceeds to distinguish two ruling and leading principles in human beings,the innate desire for pleasures, and the acquired opinion that strives for thebest. When the opinion leads through reason its power is called self-restraint,but when desire irrationally leads human beings toward pleasure it is calledexcess (hubris) (237d–e). Love, accordingly, is a particular kind of excesswhere desires overcome rational opinion and lead one away toward theenjoyment of beauty (238c). The important point to underline in this defin-ition is Socrates’ dissociation of love and logos. Love, as hubris of a specifickind, is without logos, an opposition that Socrates will later dissolve, and joinlove with logos.35 Philosophical madness combined with logos will be excess oflogos, rather than of irrational desire. The rest of Socrates’ speech follows



from this definition of love. Someone who is overcome by this particularexcess (the lover) prefers the beloved to resist as little as possible in order tosatisfy his desires. The lover would thus try to make the beloved intellectu-ally inferior, physically weaker, and prefer that the beloved would not haveany possessions. Yet this excess of being overcome by the desire for the enjoy-ment of beauty is necessarily transient. The lover, having made variouspromises while in love, will be governed by different principles, once his lovehas ceased. Sense and reason are going to replace love and madness (mania).The beloved may think that he is speaking to the same person, but this is notthe case. Socrates’ indication of this change refers to the difficulty in Lysias’sspeech. The lover cannot preserve an identity without knowing what love is.Once love is articulated in terms of transient bodily desires for pleasure, wecannot distinguish the lover from the nonlover; even the “lover” himself can-not do this. The problem of opposites is also at issue here, just as it was in thePhaedo, albeit in a different context. The lover cannot be identified by sim-ply observing the behavior of a person. To understand love one has to lookaway from what is present (“the lover”). One can understand what is presentonly after one determines what love is. This structure is similar to the one inthe Phaedo where Socrates looks away from the philosopher in order to under-stand how the philosopher practices death. In fact, the structure is not justsimilar, but is identical to the extent that the philosopher is a lover. Lovecannot be comprehended in terms of transient human desires; one has tointroduce logos into love in order to account for its permanent nature, whichin turn will provide the identity of the individual. This transformationrequires a different interpretation, as well as a “rationalization” of madness.

After Socrates finishes his speech prematurely, he attempts to leave inorder to escape any further compulsion Phaedrus may put upon him. He isunwilling to complete his speech. Phaedrus is surprised that Socrates deliv-ered only half of the speech, as he did not talk about the advantages of thenonlover, but only the disadvantages of the lover for the beloved. Socratesproposes to simply read all the disadvantages of the lover as the advantagesof the nonlover. Yet could one do this? Does this not presuppose that onecan already distinguish the lover from the nonlover? Socrates does not con-tinue because he cannot say that the nonlover will make the beloved intel-lectually superior, physically stronger. The nonlover cannot be said to be theopposite of the lover, because the former also has a desire (otherwise hewould not even deliver a speech in order to win over the “beloved”).Socrates’ speech is problematic in two aspects. First, the lover, by trying tomake the beloved less resistant, destroys the object of his love (the beloved),and consequently his love itself. He thereby undermines his identity as alover. Secondly, the nonlover is in exactly the same position as the lover,and it can be said that he will do exactly what the lover would do becausehe also has bodily desires. The difficulties Plato underlines indicate the



necessity of rethinking love, and require an appeal to the being of love,rather than an observation of what is present. What is present (“the lover”)cannot be comprehended by the senses. The lover cannot even be who he orshe is without knowing what love is.

As Socrates is about to leave, he claims to be stopped by his daimon.Socrates attributes this to his being a seer (mantis).36 He is aware that he hasoffended the god of love, the son of Aphrodite, and he has to engage in a kindof purification in order to avoid punishment, for example, the blindnesswhich Homer could not avoid but Stesichorus could. The purification is thesame as in the Phaedo, a cleansing from the bodily aspects of existence, thatis, articulating love not in terms of what we physically see as bodily pleasures,but as the way in which one is possessed by the gods. Socrates does not wantto lose his prophetic power (as a mantis, a seer), a power which protects itselfas a power (of seeing) by making Socrates aware of the danger of blindness.

In his second speech Socrates puts into question the fundamentalassumption that love is a kind of madness, and that it is harmful for thebeloved. More precisely, he does not displace the fact that love is a kind ofmadness, but he transforms the ordinary understanding of madness as theabsence of logos. Proper madness has to be understood differently, specificallyas of divine origin; as such, madness is not evil, but on the contrary the great-est goods come through madness if sent as gift of the gods (244a). The imme-diate example Socrates gives is the prophetess of Delphi, the oracle associatedwith Apollo that delivered the prophecy that Socrates is the wisest of men.It is clear that Plato now has a positive conception of madness. However, itwould be premature to claim that Plato endorses madness uncritically. Loveas madness has to be thought together with logos, or, to be more precise, as apeculiar manifestation of logos rather than as its absence.

According to the Phaedrus, there are four kinds of madness of divine ori-gin that provide goods for human beings. Therefore, it is clear at the outsetthat Socrates distinguishes madness of human origin (a disease) from madnessas a gift from gods. As Socrates later indicates while reflecting on the struc-ture of his speech, madness of human origin is a disease (nosematon, the sameword both he and Phaedrus used to describe madness as an excess of desire).37

Therefore, Socrates does indeed leave a certain kind of madness intact, buthe distinguishes this type of madness from the proper kind of madness, just ashe distinguishes the death of the body from the proper conception of deathin the Phaedo.

The first kind of madness is that which is related to prophecy, the nobleart of foretelling the future. The mantic art, according to Socrates is in factthe same as mania, a word that was later modified with an addition of the let-ter “t” (244c). This kind of madness is a gift from Apollo (265c). To theextent that Socrates sees his philosophical activity as an investigation of thestatement that he is the wisest man, he associates philosophy with the type



of madness given by Apollo.38 However, prophetic madness will be only oneof the mad origins of philosophy, as all the other three types of madness seemto be within philosophical activity. Socrates already incorporated this type ofmadness by saying that he was a seer (mantis), a claim that led to this speechin the first place.

The second type of madness deals with purifications (katharmos) andsacred rites. Purification is the same notion Socrates uses to describe thepractice of death in the Phaedo. Socrates describes the benefits of this typeof madness in the following manner: “. . . when diseases and the greatesttroubles have been visited upon certain families through some ancient guilt,madness has entered in and by oracular power has found a way of release[apallagen] for those in need . . .” (244d–e). These greatest troubles seem tobe related to bodily existence, as the diseases (noson) referred to here arebodily diseases. The release from these troubles seems to be possible onlythrough a kind of madness.39 The word for “release” (apallagen) is the sameword that Socrates uses to describe the separation of the soul from the bodyin his definition of death in the Phaedo. The second type of madness isrelated to the god Dionysus, and is also exemplified by Socrates, as he isengaged in an act of purification in order to dissolve the possible punish-ment for offending the god of love.

The third kind of madness comes from the Muses.40 It inspires the soulsit possesses to songs and poetry. The poetic madness is what Socrates hasappealed to while delivering his first speech. However, there is a definiteirony associated with Socrates’ description of himself as inspired. It is impor-tant to note that all four types of madness are related to philosophy.41

The first three types of madness already establish that god-sent madnessis far superior to any self-restraint of human origin. Therefore, the nonloveris not to be preferred to the lover. Socrates moves to the discussion of thefourth type of madness by implicitly raising the question of how the gods sendmadness to humans.42 In order to understand how madness is sent to the soulof the human being, Socrates claims, one has to understand the truth aboutthe human and divine soul. At this stage, it is established that madness con-cerns the soul rather than the body. It is, therefore, necessary to know thenature of the soul. Socrates seems to suggest that we can do this by observinghow the soul acts and is acted upon. Evidently this is not to be an “observa-tion” at all. We are faced with the same problem as in the Phaedo: how is itpossible for the soul to know itself? This question does not concern, accord-ing to Socrates, the immortality of the soul, but rather its form (idea). Heclaims that to describe the soul “would require a very long account, and is atask for a god” (246a). It is not clear whether this task is at all possible for thehuman being. In any case, Socrates claims that it is possible to describe itbriefly in a figure (in what it is like, eoiken). This appeal to eoiken, we mustemphasize, does not solve the problem of the soul describing itself. As we said



in the context of the Phaedo, this knowledge can only be of the being of thesoul, rather than of an individual soul.

The soul, Socrates continues, can be likened to a pair of winged horses anda charioteer. This appeal to a mythic story suggests that the soul has to knowitself through something other than through what Socrates claims to be itsproper activity of contemplation.43 The division within the soul (the differentactors involved) implies that there is a multiplicity in the soul, the very unity ofwhich is in question. Socrates continues to describe different forces within thesoul in terms of the characters of the horses. One horse is of good breeding andthe other one is the opposite. What distinguishes the soul of a mortal being fromthat of an immortal one is the fact that an immortal soul has a constant unityamong the different parts, whereas unity is something elusive that mortal soulsmust constantly achieve. The wings of the horses suggest that the story describesthe movement of the soul, which is said to be self-moving, hence immortal. Thewings allow the soul to accompany the divine, which is beauty, wisdom, and thegood. The ability to continue to accompany the gods in their procession aroundthe heavens depends on the possibility of sustaining the dominance of the goodhorse, which is nurtured by the good and the beautiful. Socrates continues todescribe what is to be seen beyond the heavens and thereby seems to be goingbeyond the self-imposed modesty of appealing to an image. What is there abovethe heavens is ousia ontos ousa.44 The phrase is very difficult to translate.45 I willleave it simply as being(s). It seems that Socrates is referring to beings likeabsolute justice, temperance, knowledge, and so on.46 These beings are con-stantly accessible to the gods, as they preserve the unity of their souls. As thesouls of mortal beings attempt to behold these beings by preserving the unity oftheir souls, they inevitably fail, because they have a negative dimension to theirsouls, which represents their bodily aspects. The degree to which the soul seesthese beings along with the gods creates a hierarchy among them once they areborn. The soul of the philosopher is the one that had seen being(s) the longesttime before it was born. However, the difference between the soul of a philoso-pher and others is only a matter of degree. Socrates states:

For the soul which has never seen the truth can never pass into humanform. For a human being must understand according to a form [eidos] ofwhat is said [legomenon] formed by collecting many perceptions of the sensesinto a unity [one, hen]; and this is a recollection of those things which oursoul once beheld, when it journeyed with god, and looking down upon thethings which now we suppose to be, gazed up to being as such [to on ontos].47

This passage complements the argument concerning equality in the Phaedo.A prior access to beings is the precondition for having a meaningful experi-ence.48 In other words, the beings Plato refers to are not simply to be con-templated after one is dead, but they also underlie the structure of humanexistence, and human perception. As Heidegger notes:



If we did not know what difference and equality were, we could neverencounter different things, that is, we could never encounter things at all.If we did not know what sameness and setting-against were, we could nevercomport ourselves toward ourselves as selfsame in each case; we would neverbe alongside ourselves, we would never be ourselves. Nor could we experi-ence something, something that stands over against us, something that isother than ourselves.49

Plato predicates the possibility of gathering perceptions of things that are pre-sent, indeed the possibility of perception in general, upon the “existence” ofthese beings. I believe this predication is more important than whether Platoregards them as unchanging forms or not, because he opens the possibility ofreading absence within the structure of things that are present in terms ofpresence, that is, the presence of beings to thought.50 The claim that suchbeings are necessary in order to have a meaningful experience changes theconcern about the theory of forms.51 It also underscores the necessary struc-ture of absence in sensible presence.52 Therefore, Plato can be said to under-stand sensible absence in terms of intelligible presence, but he also circum-vents a more radical understanding of absence.53

Plato explains the fourth kind of madness in terms of a memory of forms:

Now a man who employs such memories rightly (orthos)54 is always beinginitiated into perfect mysteries and he alone becomes truly perfect; but sincehe separates himself from human interests and turns his attention towardthe divine, he is rebuked by the vulgar, who consider him mad, and do notknow that he is inspired (enthousiazon). (249c–d)

This explanation of madness is also the coincidence of madness with what ismost rational. The person who remembers being(s) is considered to be mad.As a philosopher he is engaged in the maddest, and at the same time the mostrational activity. For the outside observer, the philosopher is mad. However,the observer does not know the true cause or nature of this madness, just asfor the observer the philosopher is just as good as dead, although for com-pletely different reasons. The madness of the philosopher is the presence of deathin life. Socrates’ explanation does not imply the existence of a different realmof ideas completely separate from the sensuous world. In fact his subsequentdiscussion exhibits the intimate relation between the two realms. The onewho sees beauty in the world remembers the being of beauty, and the souldevelops wings to reach that beauty. Therefore, the one who is in love witha beautiful person is reminded of the being of beauty. He or she is really inlove with the person as such only to the extent that the person reminds himor her of the being of beauty. What distinguishes this type of madness fromother kinds is that the mad one loves the beautiful, and is called a lover, andthis is the best and the highest origin (249d–e). Beauty has a privilege among



other beings such as justice and temperance because “in the appearances ofjustice and temperance and other ideas which are precious to the soul thereis no light, but only a few approaching the images through the darklingorgans of sense” (250b). But beauty is the most radiant, and also the mostenchanting (host ekphanestaton einai kai erasmiotaton) (250d).55 What distin-guishes beauty from other forms is its shining forth in the realm of appear-ances. It is clear that Plato attributes great significance to the relation ofbeing(s) to the sensuous world. Beauty is the most visible of the being(s), theone in which the relation between presence and absence takes the most com-plicated form. On the one hand, love is a desire for something that is forgot-ten and absent. On the other hand, love is also triggered by what is most pre-sent of the being(s) that are absent. Beauty as the true object of love snatchesone away from the world of human affairs, yet also demands the most inten-sified preoccupation with what is present, namely the beloved. Beauty is theproof (exhibition, brilliance) of being(s) in the world.56 Socrates concludeshis speech by further explaining love as a kind of madness. The soul of thelover is reminded of the god that it followed and tries to treat the beloved asif he were a god. Since the lover also tries to liken the beloved to the imageof a god, he or she always makes the beloved better, contrary to what is sug-gested in Lysias’s and Socrates’ first speeches. Thereby, Socrates demonstratesthat Lysias’s speech that claimed that the nonlover would make the belovedbetter was misguided in that he did not know himself as a lover or a non-lover. However, Socrates is careful to preserve the purity of love and the soulof the philosopher by attributing the highest rank to the souls that followedZeus, and by claiming that they are of a philosophical nature (252d). These(philosophical) lovers practice a philosophical life of wisdom and prudence,in which their souls preserve the power to reach the heavens. The beloved,by contrast, is seized by the image of himself reflected from the lover, and ina sense falls in love with himself through the lover, enclosing the narcissisticcircuit of love. Love as a type of madness is also beneficial for the beloved inthat he or she is improved as a person provided that madness is restricted tothe soul, rather than the body.

Socrates’ speech is an explanation of the way in which the gods sendmadness to human souls. God-sent madness is united with logos. Plato alsothereby inscribes an opposition between logos and a different type of madness,namely, a madness of human origin. This madness seems to be associated witheverything that is related to embodied existence: the senses, desires, and soon. If madness is to be praised in terms of any positive aspect, then it can onlybe done within this oppositional structure that Plato articulates. The veryattempt to simply restore the dignity of madness, of the bodily and the sen-suous, that is, to read one Plato against another Plato, will already take placewithin a certain kind of Platonism. Therefore, madness is already a philo-sophical term in Plato, both as a “definition” of philosophy where the mad-



dest is also the most rational, and as that which is “excluded” from philo-sophical activity, namely all things associated with the sensuous world.

Plato’s relationship to madness is ambivalent. Even though he appears tobe restoring madness, or indicating the inevitable crossings between madnessand reason (logos), he also solidifies the opposition between madness and rea-son by incorporating a particular definition of madness while excludinganother one. I do not claim that the opposition between life and death, ormadness and reason, is a privileged opposition in terms of which every otheropposition can be understood. However, taking Heidegger’s claim that everymetaphysical question contains the entirety of metaphysics as a point ofdeparture, I claim the opposition of madness and reason as the inscription ofoppositionality in general. Admittedly my reading of the Phaedrus is influ-enced by Derrida’s interpretation in “Plato’s Pharmacy.” I do not claim, how-ever, that madness can be substituted for pharmakon, even though such sub-stitution is in principle possible.57 Indeed, such a possibility would betroublesome for Derrida’s deconstruction. Reason is that which inscribesoppositions. Yet reason has to situate itself on one side of an opposition.Thus, there is a difficulty, one has to acknowledge, in situating reason bothas one side of the opposition, and at the inception of oppositionality in gen-eral. This difficulty forces us to think madness not as a positive experience,nor as a negative accessory, but as pointing to the “between” of madness andreason, the neighborhood in which the oppositionality comes to be inscribed.This inscription takes place both at a textual and an experiential level. Toread this inscription as a relation to absence, and, fundamentally, to death isnot to attempt to describe, nor to explain madness, but rather to underlinethe need to rethink philosophy not as a series of formal delimitations, but asa risky engagement with what is not present in and through what is present.



death and madness in the phaedo and phaedrus · in the phaedo, plato claims that philosophy is a...

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